Opening

PROS:
Many Openings and Variations
Good Binding
Nice History of Openings
Algebraic Notation

CONS:
Won't Really Teach You Openings
Takes Some Time to Learn How to Read the Tables
Just A Reference Book

Summary: The best One-Volume openings reference book you can buy, well if you can afford it.

This is not for beginners. You should know basic concepts of chess, and you will have to know/learn (it's pretty simple) algebraic notation.

The author emphasizes that corporate capitalism is in fundamental conflict with society in its consideration of human beings. Corporate employees are little more than factors of production, essentially divested of their humanity. Individual and social concerns are secondary to the almost obsessive corporate fixation on the bottom line. The author makes it exceedingly clear that the "master-slave" relationship imposed on workers in virtually all private companies stands in distinct contradiction to the notion of "free American citizens," able to fully participate in all social affairs. Lost in corporate thinking, is the fact that corporations are in fact small societies.

One would scarcely know today that the general citizenry once indirectly controlled corporations. Corporations were chartered by state legislatures for specific, limited purposes with public obligations. But in an attempt to attract corporations, some states began eliminating those limitations. The Supreme Court, in 1886, solidified corporate standing by declaring them to be legal "persons" with 14th Amendment rights to due process. As the author notes, society now must react after the fact to corporate excesses rather than exerting up front control.

Greider contends that for workers to be able to exercise the democratic-like rights necessary to ensure that companies operate without harming the larger society or the environment, it is fundamental that they become "owners" of their firms. Beyond "do-no-harm" standards, corporations need to take the initiative to become more efficient, to develop biologically degradable materials, and to recycle their products. However, authentic worker ownership is extremely rare in the United States. The author readily admits that ESOPs, a touted form of employee ownership, do not carry with them any inherent rights to participate in corporate decision making.

The financial system in the United States, consisting of investment and banking institutions, among others, has become ascendant over the last thirty years in shaping the nature of American capitalism. Those institutions emphasize short term profits and rising stock market prices while downplaying the long term interests of both the economic system and society. The author suggests that it is mostly a convenient fiction that these pressures are exerted to benefit anonymous shareholders. However, CEO compensation and the ability to leverage buyouts are rewarded by the short term manipulation of stock prices.

The author suggests that structural conditions do exist within the financial system that have the potential to exert reforming pressures on corporations. Pension funds are huge owners of corporate financial assets. Those ownership stakes can often enable funds to force corporations to not opt for short-term gains achieved by such measures as downsizing workforces or degrading the environment. Pension funds do have the fiduciary responsibility to act in the long-term interests of their beneficiaries, that is, employees. In addition to pension funds, the author points to investment funds that rate corporations on the socially beneficial effects of their operations.

Though the author points to new ownership forms, socially conscious investing, and positive environmental actions, he makes no claim that those efforts are widespread or having much impact. And the political system, as it is presently constituted, will not hold corporations accountable for the "externalities" that they generate. The political process has been captured by special interests (mostly big business) that produces, at best, pseudo legislation loaded with loopholes designed for evasion by those same special interests.

However, it is difficult to understand the author's greater confidence that political action at the local and state level can readily alter corporate practices. Politicians at those levels are in competition with similar governments to gain favor with corporations. It was, in fact, the federal government that mandated inescapable, nation-wide reforms that brought the country out of the Great Depression. Of course, corporations have increasingly defeated or avoided that regulatory framework that was concerned with "legal rights for workers, antitrust standards, and social and economic regulations."

The author recognizes that American capitalism subtly encourages the distancing of citizens from the operational centers of key social and economic institutions. The citizenry is scarcely aware that its formal democratic control of society has been usurped by autocratic corporations. Consumerism has essentially replaced the practice of democracy as the primary exercise of freedom. However, all is not well.

There are feelings of distress in our modern society. But for a public debate to occur concerning the structure and purpose of corporations, there has to be a perception that they may be at the root of societal dysfunctions. The reform efforts that Greider has noted cannot be discounted, but contrary to his hopes, there is no doubt that it will take a New Deal type of effort through federal legislation to counter corporate power. Fundamental is the need to surpass the scope of current labor law and establish formal democracy within corporations for workers. Citizens must have a voice in our primary economic institutions that have such large societal effects. From that must flow other corporate reforms such as ecological sustainability.

It is a mild criticism of the book that little direct attention is paid to the profound ability of media conglomerates and educational institutions to greatly sway public thinking. It is hardly surprising that American capitalism is, for the most part, unquestioned. The author's optimism for reform is ultimately tempered: "As it presently functions, the economy is certain to generate still greater inequality, still more pointless impoverishment of lives, more social destruction, more empty political combat, and more wreckage for future generations to clean up."

For the most part serious tier-one traders of equities, bonds, commodities and forex markets will ignore the contents of this book. They are on the cutting edge of establishing value and have no technical or fundamental instrument to quantify humanity in the daily battle of market pricing. However, senior management, bankers and administrators would be wise to examine this text. They are in a position to promote change. And only they can end the callous indifference and greed that dominates Wall Street.

Greider does his homework. He introduces the thoughts of several social gospelers and philophers to punctuate many important points. At the top of the list of culprits is how senior corporate executives have no true social responsibilities other than to make money for shareholders. On the contrary, the heroes of nurturing solid corporate social values are union managed pension funds who advocate wholesome investments.

On a less than positive note...Greider's "agitating inquiry" tends to get a little carried away with his criticism of certain segments of the financial system. For instance, his allegations of fuedalism and master/servants labor systems in today's capitalist society are weak and will be discounted by objective economists. Nevertheless, this is an important book that explores how downsizing, restructuring and outsourcing reduce human dignity, equity and self-worth for many Americans.

Bert Ruiz

But it should be required reading. As he shows, the tide is turning, consciousness is building, and there are certainly a growing number of constituencies, from private and institutional investors, business owners, academics, and government officials, who recognize the need for deep rooted change and revisionist thinking when it comes to the basic precepts of capitalism, a 19th century system that no longer reflects the complexities of today's marketplace. Instead, this maze of antiquidated legal and financial rules continues to create winners and losers, though the victims are certainly becoming the greater,from the environment itself to employees, union workers, investors and retirees to the generations of the future. And the winner's circle keeps narrowing to those few in the academic legal and economic community who expouse shareholder primacy, that a corporation exists to serve its shareholders and shareholders well, and then within those confines, the very few in the ensuing debacles of this past bull market, who actually profited from the internet bubble, not to mention those scamming executives from the likes of World Com and Enron, who managed to escape with their stock options entact before all the cookies crumbled.

Bravo, William Greider, who marches on as both a keen observer and visionary who points out that people certainly aren't going to change, but the system had better do a better job in reflecting the reality of greed and imbalance that is taking a toll globally. This book is a decade ahead of its time and could help build a better future if many take it seriously. A reviewer for The Washington Post dubbed Greider an "optimist" because of his viewpoint that large scale change wasn't only possible, but was forthcoming. But true label is "realist" because the ground swell for many of the issues he tackles has already begun. Not that you'll read about it in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal or hear about it from the usual business talking heads on cable, where contributors aren't brainy or reflective enough to grasp the big picture, if not willingly blinded to it. But Greider offers up what's taking place and why, and the historical context that our marketplace is operating in, in effortless and eloquent prose. And what he's written is an accurate protrayal of change, not just some positive thinking of the possibilities. Within many academic circles, both here and abroad, mulitnationals, stock exchanges, investment funds and business concerns, both profit and non-profit, the pressures egging on the evolution of the capitalist system are already embraced and understood.

I suggest reading Greider's book to not only understand what's at stake, but as way to align your future investment portfolio, employment possiblities, even political beliefs, because the factions he reports on in this book will have increasing power in coming years to change the status-quo to benefit our society at large.

Extremely dense, but chock full of new ideas.

Prose explanations are rare.

(Indeed,there are hardly any game references, which makes me wonder if the line is from Kasparov-Karpov, one of the games from the authors, computer analysis, or some guys from the local club!)

But it has all the coverage you would expect of a one-volume opening book.

Should this be the only opening book you buy? No. I find it more interesting to compare lines from MCO and NCO rather than blindly accept one book's version as the final one.

But if you were to _only_ buy this book, you would not be disappointed. You would have to be prepared to play through the lines, and attempt to justify the author's evaluations yourself. You won't get much help from them.

1. Innovation. This is always a topic for business stories. The book does an excellent job on describing the (almost) day to day activities that an internal, subversive group within Microsoft that hatched the idea for a game console.

2. Corporate culture. Microsoft has been accused of having a insular culture that prohibits risk-taking activities. I think in the Windows Operating System group this might be true. But Microsoft's game console strategy was one of new entrant. Sony, Sega, and Nintendo were the heavyweights. It was interesting to read how Microsoft approached the market by listening to game developers and gamers needs. They outlined a strategy that highlighted several competitive elements that the other, more entrench firms ignored.

3. Overview of Game Culture. The author is a well-known journalist that has been covering the game industry for years. There are some great insights on the industry's perks and unique charactistics. The Japanese game culture is much more highly developed vs. the American. The demographics are very selected in the US -- 18 to 26 males. Microsoft, as part of its initial console strategy, aimed to enlarge this demographic to include woman and older men.

Yet I have several misgivings about this book.

1. There aren't any reproduced internal memos, white papers, or notes that made up the effort to create the console. We are only shown photos of Microsoft employees. It would have been nice to see actual artifacts.

2. The reading sometimes is too easy. The author, of course, is a journalist. It is by far an unscholarly text.

The book is the usual business profile project creation book. It has the obligatory references to The Soul of a New Machine and lots of resume-like bios of the main characters involved in the Xbox saga. However, the book is well written and does have a number of insights into how capable the people are at MS, how well and with what determination they look at both the business case and the technology they can build.

The book also has a lot of interesting anecdotes about how the web tv project and the Xbox interacted and about Microsofts possible purchases of other games companies.

The one area where the book could be better is by including more discussion about the Xbox's actual technology, but this would have required a more technical writer and would be for a much more limited audience.

All in all, a well recommended good read.

An interesting look at how projects evolve inside a company like Microsoft and how that evolution effects subsequent strategy. It makes an interesting point of comparison for similar projects in other companies.

A good look at how Microsoft is responding to the question of games and the gaming industry.

What the book is not:

Particularly well-written, at least in my opinion. The writing felt clunky, too much like an extended magazine article and not enough like a book.

Well documented. I expected more than interviews and anecdotal evidence.

But the stories are only the exemplars for a sophisticated analysis of the tropes used by the people of Shanghai to characterize themselves and others in a period of significant transformation of mores. Because Farrer's research extended over time, we are able to see shifts in the application of these tropes both collectively and by individuals. The local typology is applied to people, places, situations, even body-parts, and obviously emerges from the author's close listening, rather than being imposed from outside. His rhetoric-analysis approach is a smart choice: he lets his subjects describe themselves, with their own candor often undermining the self-images they try to promote. The book shows the great advantage to patient listening, from which the author has spun a fascinating account of identities-in-flux at the very edge where human identity is formed first: in that anxious, self-conscious, furtive bonding that forms the most basic constituent of human society.

In Shanghai, money is sexy and sex is financial, a phenomenon that dominates James Farrer's intriguingly accurate but densely academic study of the city's recent sexual revolution. The characters and scenarios presented in Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai will be entertainingly familiar to residents of Shanghai or any other major Chinese city. Observers who have paid more than passing attention to sex in the city will be gratified for this rigorous quantification of the subject, but they will also probably be frustrated at the dense and distracting academic dialectic attempts to fit Shanghai into some postmodern deconstructive box.

Farrer combs comprehensively through all strata of Shanghai society, from the "Low Corner" blue-collars and marginalized unemployed to the downtown "little white collars" to the middle-aged "old cabbage leaves." These different classes and generations are dissected along with their respective mating rituals and the venues in which they are executed. There is a heavier focus on young white collar women, understandable given the author's perspective as an American married to one of them and his readership's likely greater exposure to and interest (prurient or otherwise) that group.

Opening Up is a compelling read for its descriptions and dissections, presented in a fondly familiar tone, but its pace slows when it switches into dense, formal "sexuality studies" mode. The dense dialectical discourses of Foucault have little off-campus appeal. Farrer has an annoying fondness for the concept of irony, finding it improbably under every leaf and stone of Shanghai's sexual dialogue. He even describes the novel Shanghai Baby, straitforwardly self-important to the point of farce, as ironic, while the only thing ironic about it is the seriousness with which Western readers treat it.

As such, Opening Up is best read in piecemeal. Start with the last chapter, "Play: Dance and Sex," a hilarious catalogue of Shanghai's various night spots and their respective sexual mores. Then jump to chapter three, "Characters: Big and Small" for an itemization of archetypes and stereotypes, lest you confuse your "KTV misses," "fishing girls" and "golden birds". Chapters four to eight are loosely grouped case studies that make for good leisurely perusing, and the densely theoretical introduction and first two chapters require either skimming or intensive plowing.

With its detailed documentation of Shanghai's sexual and romantic practices, narratives, expectations and limitations, much of which holds true for the rest of urban China, Opening Up is an interesting read for anyone interested in modern China and an indispensable blueprint for foreigners wishing to date Chinese.

The book is also a pleasure to read. Rather than the usual heavy-handed dose of cultural theory with thin ethnographic data, we plunge into an amusing and readable narrative that is a tour through contemporary Shanghai's cultural scene, into poor neighborhoods, flashy discotheques and even back in time to the early 1980s (though arguably not back far enough to when Shanghai was really interesting -- the 1930`s and 40`s)

As a scholar I also found the introduction to the book particularly helpful. It is employs an innovative take on Kenneth Burke`s theory of rhetoric to analyze how popular representations and practices of sexuality are transformed in a complex changing social and economic context of Shanghai.

Farrer is able to bring to life the dynamics and contradictions -- sexual, social and economic -- that these young people face. This is very unusual in academic writing of any kind. I was struck by the way that he saw narratives of sexual play as important devices in the marking out of new moral terrains as the once-secure Chinese political and social landscapes fade away. I also thought the use of rhetoric theory pointed to new and refreshing approaches to the question of agency within the sociology of culture: Farrer clearly shows the struggle that young people in China are facing and how they deploy in innovative ways cultural forms from a wide range of global contexts to bear upon the immediate situation. I personally would have liked to see some more historical tracing of some of these discourses, but that would have been another study.

Read the book itself to find out. It is facinating material and makes a theoretical contribution to the scholarly literature.

It's hard to recall that once upon a time Bright was a sexual radical: Look, she's the lesbian co-founder of the in-your-face, pro-pornography sex magazine, "On Our Backs"! No, wait, she's bisexual! Say, isn't that her editing annual collections of erotica? Omigod, she's relating a sex fantasy about Dan Quayle! Today, with a steady male partner (in an open relationship) and a daughter about to enter her teens, Bright comes across almost matronly.

It takes an essay like the one in this book about a bomb threat called in before one of her lectures to remind her of what's at stake and inspire some thoughtful writing, and to remind us all that large portions of the country still find someone like Susie Bright a threat.

Unfortunately, with most of this book she's largely treading water. As other reviewers have noted, she seems to have said most of what she has to say. And at 163 pages, this volume comes in a little slim at the price. Newcomers to her may enjoy _Full Exposure_, but for harder, faster Susie, I'd go for _Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World_ or _The Sexual State of the Union_.

And after that, head for the even spicier pastures of Pat Califia's _Public Sex_.

At points, however, I felt like I was just being told things I already know. Still, isn't that a good feeling, when you see your thoughts & opinions validated in print by someone who has managed to publish them? And I can't say I'd already thought about everything she discussed, so there was still some educational value. Bright managed to ask a lot of thought-provoking questions that, if you try hard to honestly answer them, could change the way you look at the world.

All in all, _Full Exposure_ was a quick, fun, witty, smart, thought-provoking read. I'd definitely recommend it.

She does, after all, write about (a fantasy of) making love to Dan Quayle ... reading that was the most I'd ever appreciated the man--and this leads to one of her _dogmas_: "Assume everybody is sexual."

This is not a heavyweight philosophical deconstruction of the sexual attitudes of western society, but it is a nice guerilla attack on the sexual terrorism embedded in our culture. Susie encourages the readers to roll their own sexual manifestos, to question the manipulative & schizophrenic messages that we receive about sexuality, sensuality, and our bodies from the culture around us.

A wonderful book to read if you're engaged in sexual liberation, whether from a sex-hating religion or from the commercial cooption of sexuality that constantly bombards us. A great starting point for your own sexual revolution!

(If you'd like to discuss this review or book in more depth, please click on the "about me" link above & send me an email. Thanks!)

Well, Freud shouldn't even be suspected of being "scientific." In France Freud is read as literature, as is only right. And to attack SETI! Sure it's a long shot, probably a VERY long shot, but what else do we have to do that could possibly reveal anything near as interesting should it succeed? Shame on you, Dewdney. Otherwise, I tend to agree with him, especially about Biosphere 2 which ought to be done again with people who have something close to a clue as to the sort of Herculean dedication and commitment necessary. And bravo for going after the not-too-bright proponents of the antiquated notion of IQ, who think they can define "intelligence," but haven't the foggiest understanding of the real question, "Intelligence for what?" even if they could define it.

In other words, this is a fun book if your ox is not being gored.

Everyone with an interest in the present and future of higher education in America will find this book to be at least interesting, and for many, dismaying and perhaps frightening. Most college teachers, I think, will find many things to which they can relate. I found the chronicle of Sacks's college teaching experience so similar to the kinds of things I have experienced as an educator that I couldn't put the book down.

The first part of the book is a tale of Sacks's experience teaching journalism at "a large suburban community college in the West," which he refers to only as "The College." Prior to being hired there, he was a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist. For various reasons, he had doubts about his future in that profession, and when a teaching job presented itself, he decided to give it a try. Whatever ideals he had about the teaching profession were quickly replaced by "confusion and bewilderment" brought on by the behavior and attitudes of Generation X students.

Sacks began teaching with the assumptions that students would read the assigned material, take notes, attend class, and turn assignments in on time. He also assumed that "C" represented average work. He very quickly learned that not only were these assumptions unfounded, but that in order to achieve tenure, he would have to play a different game. He came to realize that what these students wanted, for the most part, was to be entertained rather than educated. And that they believed that just by paying tuition they were entitled to a grade of "B" or higher whether or not they did any significant work. If these conditions were not met, he would receive negative student evaluations. And student evaluations were the main evidence cited in tenure decisions.

In discussions with colleagues he discovered that there was tacit agreement that this was the prevalent situation on campus, and that if he wanted to succeed as a teacher his student evaluations would have to improve. He was constantly admonished to "teach to the evaluations." When he changed his methods to become more entertaining (described in a chapter called "The Sandbox Experiment"), and in particular when he inflated his grades to a B, rather than a C, average, his evaluations improved dramatically.

Along the way, he encountered (either in his own classes or those of colleagues) students who asked such questions as "Do we have to read the text?" and "Why are colleges trying to force this stuff down our throats and trying to make us think when our minds and opinions are already formed?" He gradually came to see that a vicious circle existed: high academic standards meant higher attrition rates which meant budget cuts which meant loss of faculty jobs. The key to success was to ward off student failure in any way that worked.

Part 2 of the book is a more general discussion of the relation between higher education and the phenomenon of postmodernism. Sacks is quick to point out that he is not an expert in the philosophical foundations of the latter. Nevertheless, his explanation is reasonably clear, and he draws a pretty convincing picture of a generation in which skepticism and critical thought is replaced on the one hand by paranoia and distrust, and by credulousness on the other (e.g., belief in UFOs, astrology, etc.), in which "truth" is merely a social construct, everyone is entitled to succeed (where success is defined by standard of living), and in which anti-intellectualism is a virtue.

In the final chapter, Sacks makes some recommendations as to what might be done to help rectify what he obviously sees as a dangerous situation. He realizes that merely to perpuate teaching strategies that don't work in a postmodern world, even when augmented by the latest technology (an important point), will not suffice. The focus of education must shift from what you learn to how one uses that knowledge--or in Sack's words, "any given course would be one in learning how to do something, and at the same time...thinking about what you're doing, wondering why you're doing it, and imagining new ways of doing it." The role of the teacher would shift from being a "transmitter of knowledge" to that of an "expert consultant," who "[guides] students in the use of information-gathering tools, i.e., helping them learn how to learn," and "[helps] students imagine new ways of looking at knowledge, while prodding them to appreciate subtle complexities about a discipline not obtainable from machines and databases."

Sacks realizes that simply to adjust the role of the teacher as above isn't enough, however. For him the key question is the survival of higher education as a meaningful institution in our culture against the "onslaught of hyperconsumerism and amusement." Grade inflation is an obvious place to begin work, and Sacks suggests some positive steps institutions might take to combat it. The use of student evaluations in tenure decisions also needs to be scrutinized. Further, Sacks suggests that performance assessment (he cites Alverno College as an example where this has been used with success) be tried as an alternative, or at least a supplement, to traditional grading. Finally, he thinks that America ought to look more seriously at the idea that a universal college education maybe isn't for everybody after all, and that some sort of "comprehensive, national system of vocational and technical education" ought to be tried.

The debate between modernists and postmodernists will continue in spite of books like this, until postmodernism has run its course or until some new synthesis is reached. But Sacks has undeniably put his finger on a real crisis in current higher education. This is a book that should not be passed by lightly, regardless of one's philosophical position on the fate of modernism.

I recognize some of these characters from my own college follies (one of my favorite professors was considered "arrogant" because he demanded such things of students as reading the NY Times and watching the news regularly!)... yet agree with other reviews that the poor attention spans and consumerist attitudes have only gotten worse. I blame SpongeBob.

I wonder if there's something else going on besides what Sacks writes about - with this idea of the "quarter century crisis", perhaps adolescence and its ambivalence and passive-aggressiveness, is lasting longer. The persistently bad economy isn't promising students anything great after graduation - at least Gen Xers had the dot.com world and the raging Dow to motivate them.

Meanwhile, this "grade inflation" is not starting in college - it's going back to high school and earlier. If the state of Wisconsin can happily inflate how well their educational system is doing, how morally hard is it to coach kids to do well on the California Achievement Test or PSAT? Meanwhile, high school students in Europe and Great Britain are graduating with two years more experience and knowledge than American kids the same age and "rank".

Postmodernist thinking has definitely chipped away at the idea of reverence for elders, leaders or experts. It's also hurt these kids' sense of their own capabilities and weaknesses. When everyone is considered "special," but in a bland sort of way, like a preschool video game where "everyone is a winner," why wouldn't teenagers only do enough to "get by" and then still expect A grades? Meanwhile, deep down, these kids know that they have yet to be really tested, or challenged - and while some of them go on to relish learning, others avoid facing their own inadequacies. You *must* face your inadequacies and take chances (whether you win or screw up) to grow! And if the school systems and colleges aren't making them face facts, and really learn - wow, just consider what sort of graduates we're feeding into every sector of society, from government to corporate America.

Over and over, I was shocked to see students at a so-called "socially progressive" school (it wasn't Antioch, but you get the drift) avoid taking on any real responsibility or burden for positive social change. Students would whine about the lack of action in the classroom or on campus, then back down when challenged or encouraged to use the resources at their disposal! Students would "talk the talk" but shirk responsibility or creative risk-taking, and that was saddest of all - if you can't take chances in college, and expand your academic and social boundaries, where else will you do it?